TheSpaceBetween
Member
Not really. I never liked Super Mario Bros. 2, and I think Sakamoto has been treated unfairly.
Metroid: Samus Returns (Mercury Steam, Metroid 2 reimagining, 9/15) announced for 3DS
- Thread starter Cerium
- Start date
Not really. I never liked Super Mario Bros. 2, and I think Sakamoto has been treated unfairly.
Why is Sakamoto being treated unfairly? He wrote Other M. He directed it. He produced it. He chose Samus's voice actress (In English too, btw). He forced the pixel hunt segments. He chose Team Ninja. Everything wrong with Other M is because of him the decisions stemming from the ones he made.
Other M wasn't just a bad game. It was so terrible that it made everything that came after it worse because of it. If Other M didn't exist, the reaction to Federation Force would've been mild instead of insipid, especially after such a long time.
And Mark Cerny did Knack. What's your point ?
blue_phazon
Member
Amen.
People should NOT be defending Other M and Fed Force. Let Nintendo know they severely fucked up, so they don't make the same mistakes again.
Sakamoto doesn't deserve any outrageous overreactions that somehow Samus Returns will harbor bad Other M elements despite 40 minutes of footage that show none of that heavy-handed garbage.
He's been treated unfairly because he's a heavy contributor to the series. He proposed the maze design to Gunpei Yokoi. He is in charge of three great classic Metroid titles. But yes, throw the slanderous lies against his name that he refused to take criticism or hates the Prime series when all he said was nothing of the sort. It's garbage projection.
He's been treated unfairly because he's a heavy contributor to the series. He proposed the maze design to Gunpei Yokoi. He is in charge of three great classic Metroid titles. But yes, throw the slanderous lies against his name that he refused to take criticism or hates the Prime series when all he said was nothing of the sort. It's garbage projection.
At least going into Sonic 06, you know it's shit. You can laugh at how bad that game is. You can learn things about game design.
Other M lowers your IQ by how much it expects you to accept everything as fact without explanation.
D.Lo
Member
Try the Japanese version. It's sooooo much more palatable without the whiny english voices. The melodrama is just normal classic anime in vibe when the voices are Japanese.
It's still a too linear Metroid game with an overbearing Adam character and a bunch of conspiracy drama. Aka pretty much Metroid Fusion in 3D.
Sakamoto earned his reputation fair and square. I admit the guy can help make fantastic games when he's not given complete freedom, but he's also evidently a sexist dumbass so I don't feel the slightest amount of pity for him.
Sure I won't assume a game is bad just because he's involved, but I don't like him.
Tanabe on the other hand may have some silly ideas about what he wants out of future Prime games and sure he had a stupid pet project with very bad timing, but the guy seems harmless and gets the job done.
Also Other M is a bad game all around. It's fine to enjoy things that aren't good but that game doesn't do anything particularly well gameplay wise, is fundamentally flawed in areas, is a bad action game, worse Metroid game, and the writing is offensively bad.
Edit: Adam was alright in Fusion. Although personally I didn't enjoy having a navigator.
Sure I won't assume a game is bad just because he's involved, but I don't like him.
Tanabe on the other hand may have some silly ideas about what he wants out of future Prime games and sure he had a stupid pet project with very bad timing, but the guy seems harmless and gets the job done.
Also Other M is a bad game all around. It's fine to enjoy things that aren't good but that game doesn't do anything particularly well gameplay wise, is fundamentally flawed in areas, is a bad action game, worse Metroid game, and the writing is offensively bad.
Edit: Adam was alright in Fusion. Although personally I didn't enjoy having a navigator.
Miyamoto made Yoshi's Story.
Federation Force was just a mediocre, poorly-judged spinoff, those happen all the time. It was not an insulting main series game like Other M that shat on everything people liked about Metroid.
Obviously the quality of the game was universally criticised but it sold like rancid dog shit. That's the main reason why Nintendo put the series on ice for such a long time.
Little Green Yoda
Member
Other M was garbage and deserves every bit of scorn towards it. Those pixel hunt sections can burn in hell. And get the forced, terribad plotlines out of my Metroid please.
Probably the only Wii game I regret buying and I got it on sale.
Palpable, maybe. Understandable? Not a chance in Hell.
CaviarMeths
Member
I fired up Other M a couple days ago after finishing Zero Mission, Super Metroid, and Fusion.
Yep, it's still a decent game with a bad story, just like it was the better part of a decade ago. Metacritic rating in the 70s is about right.
Yep, it's still a decent game with a bad story, just like it was the better part of a decade ago. Metacritic rating in the 70s is about right.
cireza
Member
Except that Fusion is actually a fantastic Metroid game.
A Metroid game that makes you travel in a straight line for the entire game, can never be called decent. Before getting into any of the other problems, the level design is a catastrophic failure. A decent Metroid game would not entirely remove the exploration aspect of the franchise.
Other M had one mistake:
it was on the wrong console.
it should have NEVER been a console game, it looks way too low budget for it, it should have been moved to the 3DS and adapt to the controls there.
when you have Metroid freaking Prime to live up to, you don't release some modest B-tier poorly-presented melodrama, with gameplay that ends up being solid at best, clunky at worst.
they fucked up big time. no way defending that.
it was on the wrong console.
it should have NEVER been a console game, it looks way too low budget for it, it should have been moved to the 3DS and adapt to the controls there.
when you have Metroid freaking Prime to live up to, you don't release some modest B-tier poorly-presented melodrama, with gameplay that ends up being solid at best, clunky at worst.
they fucked up big time. no way defending that.
TheMoon
Member
Stop stealing my idea. Now it looks like I stole it
Federation Force is a great game. Period. It wasn't what people wanted and had weird character designs, so what. Other M is a good game, too. With lots of problems and potential to improve. Stop pretending like they're some atrocious shovelware. That's just plain not the case.
Crimsonclaw111
Member
Yeah, I've got to defend it on one thing: the game looks really good. A shame that's really the only good thing about it besides the speedboost in 3D.
I remember when Other M came out and a couple years afterwards there was an effort by a lot of Metroid fans to downplay Sakamoto's role in the franchise and instead credit it to other people like Yokoi. All in order to push a narrative that Sakamoto was always a bad director or producer and shouldn't be near the Metroid franchise anymore. I hate Other M, but bad games happen even from great directors or producers. It's more productive to criticize the game than to try to fling blame at individuals involved in its development, especially since we don't and will never know the full picture.
D.Lo
Member
Palatable not palpable.
And understandable? As in comprehending the story? It's a silly story told like a cheesy anime but really quite simple to follow?
And if you mean understanding why the story was like it was? Well, it's basically a Metroid Fusion remake. I had the exact same problems with Fusion back in the day, they were just amplified by the voice acting in OM. In Japanese, OM dropped back to 'tier 2 Metroid' for me, instead of 'Ew I hate it', so that's why I recommend the Japanese version.
You mean Other M was universally criticised? It reviewed extremely solidly. It did sell very poorly. But the negativity is a later backlash, it was not there at the start, to say it was universally criticised is absolutely not true.
Federation Force received mixed reviews, including some good reviews too, and most of the negative reviews are complaints were about the context rather than the game itself. I found it a high quality game, just a frustrating use of a talented resource.
foxuzamaki
Doesn't read OPs, especially not his own
A whole page full of common sense, this is so refreshing
CaviarMeths
Member
Not sure what you're trying to sell me here. I just played the game like 2 days ago. Perhaps save the exaggerations for someone who doesn't know any better.
I agree, until the post game.
post game had a GREAT exploration phase, that showed us how good the game could have been with a better level design for the first part of the game.
Post game was also pretty long, time-wise.
Sorry but nothing screamed low budget in Other M.
you could dislike the choices done, of course, but it wasn't a cheap spin off at all.
sakamoto + team ninja isn't cheap; top looking graphic assets aren't cheap (you and many other can dislike the art direction, but technically it was a Wii showcase); voice acting and storitellyng aren't cheap (once again, you could dislike how they handled it but they were there); deep combat/control scheme aren't cheap.
It's not that a (mostly) sidescrolling camera angle make a game cheap.
Ok that I've heard for months that Mario 3D World was cheap because of its camera, but stil...
you have one hell of a selective memory.
it took maybe 1 or 2 weeks to see the stampede of angry fans in every page that had users' reviews. Gamefaqs for example had loads and loads of 2, 3 or 4 out of 10 reviews from their users, I remember vividly cause I didn't expect that reception,
take a moment to think about how the Prime games looked and felt (Phendrana drifts, Sanctuary Fortress, Samus' design, Samus vs Ridley battle on MP3, to name very few examples)
Other M manages to look worse than all prime games being in a next gen-console.
it screams low budget to me.
CaviarMeths
Member
This is mostly my memory of how it went down too, but not the bolded. Come on, angry fans don't rate things 2-4/10. Fans only rate things 1 or 10, nothing in between.
foxuzamaki
Doesn't read OPs, especially not his own
You are creating your own narrative now, no metroid other M was not low budget, its possible it was the highest budget yet considering how much they put into advertising it.
It had full voice acted cutscenes for one, and none of it was any slides or anything, they even had multiple and long-ish CGi cutscenes, You need to stop talking like nobody else played this game, we all did.
TheMoon
Member
So you're saying you feel Prime had better art (something probably universally agreed on in most cases). Then just say that.
D.Lo
Member
Read what I actually wrote.
I proved this with published reviews. The majority of reviews were positive, and it was around 80 on gamerankings. The consensus at release was demonstrably 'solid with small some issues'.
How much later the backlash came is a side issue I was not addressing (though unless you're claiming your purely anecdotal evidence of 'rage on forums' pre-dated the reviews, then yes, the backlash came later, even if only by a few weeks). But my actual point was that the claim:
Is 100% demonstrably false.
AmayaPapaya
Banned
There was already a few great responses, but just wanted to say that judging someone's ability to make a main series entry, based off of their spin-off, makes little sense. Even people who insist that Tenabe wants to turn Metroid into some action Star Wars franchise are off. Retro wanted to make Prime 3 even more actiony with Power Fantasy elements, but he moderated them and decided to keep Metroid unique as there are enough titles like that. I think the guy gets Metroid enough to make a sequel.
-shadow-
Member
I don't understand why people think you can't hold someone with a proven track record accountable for a terrible project. Yes Sakamoto has done some absolutely amazing stuff, and yes he should be credited for doing that and remembered for that. But at the same time, you should also hold him accountable for the mess that is Other M (and not just the story). Just sort of sweeping it under the rug because he's made great stuff before shouldn't be the solution to a mediocre product at best.
However, I don't feel that taking the series away from him is the solution that some are suggesting on the other side. He's had nearly seven years since his last Metroid project, the criticism of Other M are known and he's had years to evaluate what worked and what didn't work in that game. So let's see what he does with it in the remake. Going by the footage he's done his job and changed course accordingly.
I'm cautiously optimistic that this will be another great game going by the footage that we've seen so far. Yes the series has been in a rough spot, but who knows what the future is.
Edit: As for Tanabe, he made a silly spin-off title that was launched at the worst time possible. They should've hold onto that one and release it in-between the remake and Prime 4. As it is, its reputation is the final nail in the coffin of the Metroid series, even after last E3.
However, I don't feel that taking the series away from him is the solution that some are suggesting on the other side. He's had nearly seven years since his last Metroid project, the criticism of Other M are known and he's had years to evaluate what worked and what didn't work in that game. So let's see what he does with it in the remake. Going by the footage he's done his job and changed course accordingly.
I'm cautiously optimistic that this will be another great game going by the footage that we've seen so far. Yes the series has been in a rough spot, but who knows what the future is.
Edit: As for Tanabe, he made a silly spin-off title that was launched at the worst time possible. They should've hold onto that one and release it in-between the remake and Prime 4. As it is, its reputation is the final nail in the coffin of the Metroid series, even after last E3.
Every gaming website on the internet was overflowing with well-deserved vitriol almost immediately after the game came out. Are you really trying to pretend that the consumer reaction to the game was not overwhelmingly negative?
D.Lo
Member
Goalposts and all that.
You did't say consumer reaction, you said
Even in this very page of this very thread many people have said the quality of the graphics and gameplay was high, and it was story/cutscenes that brought it down. And as I proved, most reviewers were very positive overall.
So yeah, maybe look up the word universal.
lol
I suppose the Star Wars prequels are not universally criticised either? After all they have a positive RT score. Colloquialisms, how do they work?!
Other M was a highly polished turd. It sold worse than any AAA Nintendo game in recent memory. It put the franchise on ice for 7 years until they could return to the Prime series. Yes, it received the same mindlessly positive reviews that all AAA games used to get in the 360/Wii era, mainly because of its brainless "cinematic" presentation. Once gamers actually got their hands on it the reaction was negative in the extreme. It was in bargain bins within weeks, unheard of for a major Nintendo game.
CaviarMeths
Member
If we want to talk about well-reviewed games that have actual overwhelmingly negative consumer reactions, Other M has a better user score on MC than literally every Call of Duty game since MW2.
While we're at it, it also has a higher user rating than all 3 Star Wars prequels.
While we're at it, it also has a higher user rating than all 3 Star Wars prequels.
Games with overwhelmingly negative reactions do not sell tens of millions of copies. They sell like Other M.
Rran
Member
While I can't speak for everyone on the Sakamoto "defense team," it isn't that I'm unwilling to lay blame for a disappointing project (he most certainly should be called out for more than a few of the game's questionable design choices... even though I feel the title does receive more hate than is warranted), but rather I'm of the opinion that the level of vitriol directed towards him has seemingly exponentially outweighed his prior achievements.
EDIT: The way I see Other M's development, Sakamoto wanted to do something different--he's obviously close to the franchise and felt like exploring the character of Samus. From all the promotional material, trailers, interviews, etc., the game certainly piqued my curiosity (at least moreso than the previous big Metroid entry--Prime 3--which, as silly as it sounds now, I had kiiinda grown a bit tired of); I had no idea how the developers would incorporate this seemingly ambitious, emotional, narrative-driven element into a satisfying Metroid title... and, ultimately, they didn't. It's an okay game--doesn't scratch that Metroid itch, and the story leaves quite a bit to be desired--but I wouldn't say it's terrible. More a bit of a failed experiment than anything, I guess...
Super Metroid did that too.
And the Pikmin franchise waited 10 years for a new entry, not because the previous game was bad or anything.
Everything not Mario or Zelda is prone to take breaks. They didn't have the team or the ideas to go on and it's better this way rather than milking it to exhaustion.
I think when you are dealing with a beloved franchise, a truly bad product from the original creator is always going to lead to this type of criticism. It's no different to what George Lucas, Ridley Scott, and many other visionaries have to endure. If you want the adulation that comes with great works, you have to accept the contempt that comes from a bad product. If Samus Returns is good, then Sakamoto will restore his reputation, you will always be judged on your most recent work.
Metroid had games in 2002 (x2), 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2010. Then nothing for 6 years. Had Other M been a success, so you think we would be waiting 8/9 years for the next big Metroid game?
The gap between Super and Prime is in a completely different context due to the massive shift from 2D to 3D.
CaviarMeths
Member
Other M sold like an underwhelming Metroid.
Which is to say, it sold a little worse than a good Metroid.
foxuzamaki
Doesn't read OPs, especially not his own
I believe it the same for George Lucas aswell, we arent talking about criticisms, we heard all this back in 2010 and for lucas way before that, there is a point where the criticism turns to vitriol and it has since gone to that, and even into personally judging the person's character.
A person you and I do not know. For projects that are usually a team effort.
D.Lo
Member
So it's always because of a bad game except when it isn't because other newly brought up reasons. Pikmin example - not addressed because it doesn't fit the story you are emotionally invested in: That Other M was so bad it blocked the series from continuing.